What We Must
by HyaHya
Summary: Set after S02 E09 'The Trial'. Darla lives, sort of.


What We Must

_**Synopsis:**__ Set after S02 E09 'The Trial'. Darla lives, sort of._

We sit in silence in her cheap motel room. The defeated stench of despair hangs, tauntingly, in the air. Darla's heart beat is slow and calm but I can smell the fear and I know she's weighing her options.

I'm weighing mine too.

Is there a way I can save her? Is there something I've missed? She cheated death twice, why can't she do it a third? I glance at the very human Darla and realise she can't. Her face says it all; she's given up. Lines that I never knew existed in Darla age her features yet her humanity makes her seem younger to me than ever before. My gaze drops to the floor and I search my memories for something, anything that can save her.

Our eyes meet very briefly on their path to the next dull object to observe and I am mesmerised by the soul I see lingering in Darla; it's something very alien when it comes to my sire.

The horrifying reality of it hits me like a freight train (and I was hit by one of those once). It's her or her soul. It's either Darla, the _human_ Darla or it's her body that will remain, enduring on as a member of the undead.

My voice is raw, as if I haven't spoken in hours, and maybe I haven't, when I murmur a solution. "I could turn you."

Darla's azure eyes dart to mine and I am struck by how very blue they are, like sapphires, or the deep blue creases in the waves of the ocean. Her eyes are afraid though, blue with fear, afraid of what she was, of who she was and afraid, of me.

"No!" She splutters. The thought of becoming Angelus's Darla is as scary as the aspect of my soul abandoning me once again. She shivers. "No." She repeats quieter.

I frown at her sadly. She doesn't understand; I can't lose her, not again and certainly not because I let it happen.

I get to my feet and she flinches away, fearful of a demon of her own creation. My hurt shows on my face and I began to pace up and down the apartment.

"There must be a way." There is no 'possibly'; there _is _a way as I cannot possibly live with myself if I let her die.

She looks at my face and gives a sad little laugh. "Give up Angel; there is no way." The fact that she only calls me 'Angel' is a twist of the metaphorical dagger. She's given up, that's the only reason she would allow herself to be defeated and no longer call me by the name she gave me. "I know you're trying to think of something." She could always read me like a book. "I know you're raking through every memory in that head of yours." She smiles at me, sincere and my heart aches. "Don't."

She's been saved, I've saved her. Yet the pain, the burn of grief is preparing to claw its way out through my heart and it is not a feeling of relief.

I want to scream. I want to smash everything in her apartment to bits as I did in the stone room.

Darla, as always, knows what I'm thinking.

"Don't break it." Her lips are set in a regretful half-smile, so unlike the Darla I knew. "If I only have a few months left I would prefer to live it in luxury," Her words strike a chord, deep in me and it hits home. She's dying. It's hard to see Darla as anything but the seductive, powerful vampire she was but I can see the human underneath, just.

Her hands are shaking. She's afraid. I can smell it, just as I can smell her musky perfume. She's afraid of dying. "You don't want to die." The words curl from my lips like a human's breath on a cold day.

She gives a defeated nod.

I sit down again.

"I don't want you to die." The oceans of her eyes observe me again and she graces me with another sad smile.

"If onlyI'd allowed myself to know you." She chuckles, a small simpering laugh. "Your soul makes you quite sweet. Perhaps I would've even been able to love you." An emotion builds up in my chest. The very same emotion that burned through my heart as she threw me out the door with my dirty rag of a soul. Longing. Needing. Perhaps even loving.

I move to join her on the bed. She hesitates but does not stop me settling beside her. When she realises that I do not intend to turn her she relaxes into my larger form. She's so little. A human doll in the arms of her miscreant childe. I wrap my arms around her.

I know that if she said the right words, did the right things then I would trade her my soul here and now and it would be gone by morning.

I almost wish that she would. Then I could turn her and we could be the whirlwind again, maybe we might even love one another.

She doesn't though and I feel the longing grow.

Her heart thrums against my chest. We close our eyes. Darla speaks.

"I've never cared before, for a person." My hands stroke through her hair, not the golden ripples of Buffy's locks but the silvery tint of the moon. "Not even as a human did I care," her hand brushes mine. "Yet now I have blood running through my veins again and it's actually warm." My thumb strokes the ridges of her knuckles. "And it hurts." She turned to me and her blue is poisoned with sadness. "Is it meant to hurt?"

My hand finds a resting place on her heart. "It's what makes it real." I remember, with the pain and guilt of my soul came the emotions, the love that human souls were capable of and I'd spent so long searching for her because of it.

Darla's tiny lungs are working a little faster than they are meant to and I realise she's shaking. Silver tears roll down her cheeks and her head falls onto my chest. I hold her a little tighter.

It feels like my existence is ending too. A decade is a long time to be with someone but a century… The grief is going to kill me. Buffy's presence kept me afloat when she died the first time but now I have to watch. Watch as her human body shrivels away and every night try and fail to provide her with comfort.

My lips slide along the porcelain flesh of her cheek as I lift her head. She returns the affection. It is an intimacy we have never shared; the days of eighteenth century were too rabid animals fighting for dominance but now as tongues do not spar as if we have time to waste, it's because we have time we must savour.

The kisses are still slow as my tongue works down to her throat. My human teeth lightly graze her pulse but I am reminded this is not the Darla I used to tear into, this is a fragile human.

I realise that I have the power. Let her live, in a way or let her die and be forced to watch

Darla senses the change and she pulls away from me. _No. _Her eyes say.

"Please." Her voice has no childish simper. I don't know whether it's a beg for me to not do it or to do it. I do it anyway.

My teeth sharpen and break the thin membrane of her flesh. Her blood fills my mouth. _Family blood is always the sweetest. _She is sweet, golden nectar coated in sugar. Her hands push, trying to use whatever she can as leverage to break free but she's already had her strength taken. I ignore it, along with the stabbing screams of my conscience. Her movements weaken and I extract my teeth from her.

"I'm sorry." It's a whisper and will never fix what I have just done and will do. I slice my wrist open on the table beside us and she's looking at my bloody wrist.

First she shakes her head. But they drink. They always drink. Always.

Finally her body goes limp and we slide to the floor. I rest her head on my lap. My hand combs through her hair. I don't move.

I don't move when Lindsey and his gang from Wolfram & Hart arrive armed with tasers. He looks from my bloody lips to the puncture wounds on Darla's pale exposed neck. He seems almost angry and I know that he is fond of her. He didn't want me to turn her.

"Daddy!" He wanted my childe to turn her. Drusilla is delighted, I can tell. She coils herself around my stiff form and ushers the Wolfram & Hart employees away. Lindsey shoots Darla's motionless body a longing glance. Drusilla manages to offer me comfort as she knows me better than all even if that's because I broke her that way. She murmurs in my ear and strokes Darla's hair too. "Grand mummy is going to be my sister!" She seems so excited, as if Darla will not treat her like dirt when she reawakens as a member of the undead.

But even she has left by the time Angel Investigations arrive. She has muttered some transparent lie about getting her new sister a dress but I know she has gone to feed, perhaps find a dress as well. It offers me comfort that she understands that her Angel-beast is still around. It means I'm still good. Maybe.

Wesley and Gunn burst in with obviously not an idea of what they're expecting. When they see me cradling Darla's corpse Gunn's concern turns to disgust and all Wesley can muster is a regretful "Oh Angel…"

Drusilla returns with a dress while we are all frozen and all hell breaks loose. I don't want to attack my childe yet I don't want to harm my friends and both are poised to attack. Then I pull Drusilla's wrist. Her brown eyes bore into mine, swimming in madness but I can still tell her with my own dark eyes to leave.

She does as she is told.

Gunn has lost all trust for me. Not just because of the blood smeared round my lips and Darla's dead body but Drusilla's obedience for her sire. I lick my lips uncomfortably and Darla's sweet lifeblood fills my mouth again. Gunn glances away, his face contorted in an expression of _Ugh._

It's silent as we go back to the hotel. I cradle Darla's little pulseless body and carry her to my room.

Cordelia's whiskey eyes narrow as she watches me carefully manoeuvre my cargo up the stairs.

She comes up after I hear Gunn and Wesley leave.

"Angel." Her tone is cold and her eyes have lost their warm sheen.

"Do you know?"

"Know _what?"_ Her voice is sharp and angry, that scolding voice I know so well.

"What it's like to spend a hundred years with someone." She takes a sharp breath and I feel slightly guilty for my method of attack.

Her tone softens. "I don't know, but what you did wasn't right."

"It's never right." My tone is suddenly rivalling Cordelia's in bitterness and I glance over to Darla's motionless form. "Nothing involving me and Darla is _ever _right."

Cordelia is silent. For once she doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know whether to comfort me or scold me, or perhaps just leave.

Dru appears at the balcony and her choice is decided.

"Go home Cordy," I utter as Drusilla leers at her. "This is a family matter."

She huffs, and sighs but ultimately walks away her eyes nervously analysing Dru as she leaves. It makes me remember that they always walk away, either I drive them away or I walk away and they don't bother to follow. It's a bitter realisation that the only people who have never truly left me are evil that I have created.

Drusilla leaps into my room and lays a white rose she retrieved from wherever on Darla's unbeating chest. "Grandmummy will be awake soon." Her whisky eyes are dark and serious, not sane but serious as their bore into my hawthorn lenses and she says firmly "You need to be Grandmummy's daddy."

Drum ever ceases to amaze me. Whether it's the length of her madness or just how well she knows me. Her eyes glitter with real concern for her new sister and I don't understand. Sensing my confusion she repeats herself.

"You need to be grandmummy's daddy." I blink and she mimics me, not really understanding why. "You need to be my angel."

_Then, _I understand.

Hours later Darla awakes from her deathly slumber. At first she doesn't understand, she sits up, not quite understanding how she got from her room to mine.

Her eyes link with mine and I see the fading imprint of her soul. She doesn't feel that it's gone yet and all she can do is stare shards of guilty ice straight into my soul that still remains. All she can say is a dry, whisper of "Why?"

I join her on the bed and wrap my arms around her. She returns the embrace. Then I feel the gentle yet ice cold touch of Drusilla, her sharp nails trembling softly against porcelain skin. It feels like a family.

And that is what we are. A family. A family of the most evil monsters that the world could create. A family of beasts, murderers and rapists. Torturers, masterminds and death.

As our arms wrap around each other in a triangle I feel Darla's touch tighten. I pull back and meet her eyes. They belong to the Darla of old. My soul sinks slightly as I know it's over. Darla's over.

She smiles at me, a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, a smile mimicking that of the human Darla but it's just enough. Enough for me to pretend it's the Darla I want.

She leans close and whispers. "I'm thirsty." I know what she's asking, what she's offering.

She's offering me the world, just like when we first met. It wouldn't be my fault, we'd tear through the hotel, tear through the city. Write our names in blood red on the throats of our victims and the dark walls of LA.

"Take it from me." I say, not really hearing myself. She smiles. It's not quite what she wants but its good enough.

Her newly fanged teeth tear through the flesh of my jugular. I tense with the burst of pain. Then comes the pleasure and I roll over, bringing Darla with me, allowing her to keep drinking.

I give in. "Take it all." I whisper.

It is a re-enactment of Drusilla's turning. Me and Darla having sex, Dru watching, the lights of the fire glowing in the madness of Dru's irises.

But this time Dru isn't the one being reborn.


End file.
